Named after Schlock, an alien shaped like a pile of crap with eyes and a mouth who joins "Tagon's Toughs", a space-faring mercenary outfit. The cast includes the aforementioned Kaff Tagon, The Captain of the group, Commander Kevyn Andreyasn, inventor of the "teraport" system and all-around Mad Scientist, Ennesby, a former virtual boy band turned ship's AI, and many others.

Consistent humor (it is very quotable) and we mean consistent — Schlock has been running seven days a week without missing a day since the 12th of June 2000 - eleven years. Sometimes it gets slightly political, but never partisan. Let's just say it's not for people who think governments deserve sympathetic treatment. This is a world where the only respected authority is the one with the larger gun - in other words, the perfect world for a mercenary company.

Justified for the Pa'anuri, who are hurt by teraport use; then again, their response to the invention of teraporting when they could manage it was to pulverize the inventors' civilization and then blow up the star for good measure. They later set up a time bomb to blow up the galaxy, just to be sure.

Absurdly Sharp Blade: Many of the blades in the setting are capable of slicing through heavy armor. Tailor is particularly impressive, as he's able to dismember the hands of three heavily-armored Mooks in a single pass. Somewhat justified in that example, since Tailor was designed to cut, create, and modify body armor.

Air Vent Passageway: A Running Gag is Schlock hiding in air vents. Since he's an amorphous blob, the air vents don't actually have to be wide. Also, at least once he sneaks into a ship via the sewer. As he possesses an incredible sense of smell and tastes with every surface of his body, he has no pressing urge to repeat the experience.

Tayler started that if the comic got 10,000 votes in a February 2010 Washington Post poll, he'd kill an attorney drone in the "Mallcop Command" arc, and that if he won, he would kill ALL the attorney drones. Sadly, neither came to pass.

And There Was Much Rejoicing: Tagon's Toughs had this reaction to Xinchub's death. He had spent several arcs as the personally nastiest of the Tough's rogues gallery (or, in his own words, "the biggest ace-hole in the game"), and his death caused happy-dances throughout the major cast.

Anti-Gravity Clothing: Epaulets, at least in Sol-related organizations. It's even possible to punch the wearer from under them, as Elizabeth demonstrated on one UNS captain. Also, some people like to integrate grenades in these. For those wearing heavy body armor, rank tabs are painted on pauldrons, however.

Anti-Hero: The entire central cast. Notable for mostly being played for laughs, instead of Angst.

Anyone Can Die: Throughout most of the series, Death Is Cheap. Characters can be regrown in a tank from just a head, preserved in a nanny-bag to prevent degradation, and Tagon, Kevyn, Elf, Xinchub, and Petey have all come back from far less. Which makes it that much more shocking when characters like Hob, Sh'vuu, Pronto, Doctor Lazcowicz (supposedly), and Brad, some of whom had been around since the very beginning, were all Killed Off for Real.

Almost each book or story arc seems to have it's own phrase, which is usually the name of the book that arc's strips will be compiled into. Before "Massively Parallel" (also the title of the planned book), there was "Longshoreman of the Apocalypse." Before that, it gets a little hazy. There's also recurrent phrases mostly from the "Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries," such as "Pillage, then burn" or "There is no overkill. There is only 'open fire' and 'time to reload.'"

Armor-Piercing Slap: Mostly played straight (and since armour has gotten a little stronger in the past thousand years, the slap can be delivered in equally powered armour or by a bullet). Subverted here after a classic setup.

The crimes Kevyn could hypothetically be tried for include: treason, high treason, and grand spamming. However, in the 31st century spammers are held in the same contempt as pedophiles so it's a subversion.

Kevyn: Hey, the only charge they can make stick is the spamming.Ceeta: You need to capture some moral high ground that sits outside of artillery range.

The future equivalent of DUI carries the death penalty because you have to be completely sober to modify the vehicle to make it possible to use manual mode while under the influence.[1] In some cases, this requires installing a manual mode. Quite understandable, however, since the consequences of screwing up while drunk are exponentially different when you're piloting a spaceship.

Played straight with a rounding error.Since the current list of crimes includes armed conquest and attempted genocide, rounding pi down to 3 seems like an especially trivial crime, even when you're charged by an AI.

Played with. Tagon likes this trope; whenever one of his men does something stupid (such as blowing up the ship/fleet/planet), they usually get a promotion if they survived.

At least, if they survived and blowing up the ship/fleet/planet did the job it was supposed to.

Tagon himself. He's not the brightest on strategy or tactics (though far from the worst at it, either), but nobody in the company can beat him when it comes to combat. He's extremely sharp in his own way when it comes to the things he's good at (which is, unsurprisingly, hurting people and breaking things), even if a little Book Dumb. He just looks dim next to the hyperintelligent warship AI and one of the single greatest scientific minds in the galaxy.

Kevyn: I can't help but wonder whether you're able to function in society.Pi: I don't function in society, sir. I'm a mercenary. I blow society up.

Schlock has his moments, too...

Schlock: I'll have you know that I only resort to violence when the situation calls for it.Lady Emily: Of course, by 'situation' you mean 'voices in your head', right?Schlock: And you don't want to know what they're saying right now.

The Battlestar: Battleplates, plus Ob'enn Superfortresses and pretty much every ship made by the psycho bears, everything the Toughs fly in after the Kitesfear is destroyed (with the exception of Serial Peacemaker), Petey's Extortionator class ships, and every ship equipped with a fabber.

Behind the Black: The Toughs frequently display their ignorance of the law, never seeming to notice their lawyer is present until Massey sticks his head into the frame.

BFG: Schlock loves them so much that he once actually rejected a far more powerful and efficient (antimatter- rather than fusion- powered) equivalent of his plasma cannon because it was dinky-looking. And because it lacked the "Ommminous Hummm'.

"Nutcracker" is large, but it have to be, as a plasma / rocket launcher combo.

Thus when someone with up-to-date hardware hauls out a tripod mounted gun, you know they mean business.

Thurl: The metaphor monitor indicates that Ennesby has vented his virtual bowels.Kevyn: I can see that, but where'd the virtual bricks come from?Narrator: Goodnight, kids!

In another strip, in a conversation with King Xinchub in his bathroom:

Petey: [...] I was going to employ Tagon and company to extract you, but they declined. Apparently they'd rather see you dead.Petey: You look like you're thinking maybe the plumbing in here needs to accommodate flushed bricks.

Blue and Orange Morality: The Fleetmind, the F'Sherl-Ganni, the Pa'anuri. This strip in which the Reverend Theo Phobius mentions measuring sticks with evil clearly marked upon them, all of differing lengths, some of which measure in directions perpendicular to reality.

The earlycareer of Ennesby as "New Sync Boys". Not only it got a nostalgic callback lateron, but later... three guesses as to who turned out to be one of those forlorn fangirls? And then his ability to plausibly do so became a plot point.

And then the ship Ennesby gets to fly was named "Neosynchronicity".

Bulletproof Vest: Most of the characters wear body armor. This comic points out that body armor is only useful if you get shot in an armored spot.

By-The-Book Cop: Major Murtaugh is honorable and disciplined; Sanctum Adroit in general have reputation for the same (as well as for general competence and being a bit self-righteous).

Caught in a Snare: When the Toughs land on a planet only to discover it's home to a sentient stone-age race.

Cerebus Retcon: Subverted. The early gag of the "magic cryokit" modified by the Toughs' former doctor using his illegal research, including dumping his own memories into it, takes on surprising seriousness in light of later revelations about the doctor, his role in certain black projects, and what those projects are capable of. Also related, the apparent throwaway joke at the time that the doctor's corpse was missing unspecified parts when it was brought in for the bounty; it's not until more than six years later that we find out that said illegal research is capable of rebuilding people from parts of their dead body.Subverted in that it's done so subtly and over such a long period that it appears to be less a retcon than incredibly long-range foreshadowing.

Chekhov's Armoury: The Massively Parallel arc has had so many Chekhov's Guns left lying around that the readers have probably forgotten half of them . . . should be fun once said guns all get chain-fired.

Excellent example is here, making Credomar a literalChekhov's Gun. One capable of firing across the galaxy.

Yet another rapidfire burst of gunfire: The end of "The Body Politic" arc had the Toughs' collective memories wiped in order to prevent them from being executed by the UNS in order to cover up secrets. The deal also included a complete cutoff from Petey. Two arcs later, near the end of "Massively Parallel", Petey bails them out as mentioned in the above mentioned literal 'Gun', and it's only Schlock's circumvention of the mindwipe rearing its head that makes Tagon listen to anything Petey has to say. Like the Toughs themselves, Howard sure loves his guns...

Averted for everyone on-screen. Duplicated characters are treated as legally and morally equal to the originals, and are usually Put on a Bus rather than killed. An extreme example is "The Gavs": a cameo by the creator of Nukees is duplicated some 950 million times in an instant, and is now a dominant ethnic group and marketing demographic in his own right.

Captain Tagon: Kevyn and, um. . . Kevyn, do you have any suggestions for how I handle paying you? I mean, there are two of you now.Timeclone!Kevyn: No. There is one of me, and one of him.

In Kevyn's case his gate clone replaced him completely, as he'd been killed by his own improvised gravy gun. His time clone (from an alternate future) retired after winning the lottery and apparently some mob-run horse races.

HOWEVER... Uncountable gate clones were tortured and murdered off-screen over all the time the F'sherl Ganni gates were the galaxy's only practical form of transportation.

Up through book 6, Resident Mad Scientist, the United Nations of Sol is portrayed as just one out of many major galactic powers. After book 7, Emperor Pius Dei, the subject of galactic politics doesn't come up much for a few books, but, when it does start coming up again, the UNS and the Plenipotent Dominion seem to be the only major powers in the galaxy.

By book 14, Broken Wind, the Uniocs in particular are demoted from "major power" to "cultural underdogs". (This may even have happened by book 7, in which Ebbirnoth, in "Glamour Assault", was planned to pretend to be a terrorist attacking humans in the name of "Unioc independence".)

Before book 15, Delegates and Delegation, the internal politics and organization of the United Nations of Sol were used mostly just for Cryptic Background References and didn't come into the story much, and the structure of the UNS seemed to change between books.

Early on, it's treated as unusual for anyone but a mercenary or pirate to know the Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries; in particular, Captain Tagon and Colonel Ceeta both are surprised at General Xinchub quoting them. Over time, it becomes progressively more common for UNS military service-members to quote the Maxims. In book 14, even one of the peaceful, innocent Neoafans cites Maxim 45.

Later, there's Credomar, a habitat founded on the principles of democracy that was near anarchy with at least six competing factions by the time the Toughs got there. They ended up electing a robot dictator who actually got things done.

Determinator: Howard Tayler, the author. Nothing can stop him from updating every single day. Not injuries, not software glitches, nothing. Even a transformer explosion at the server farm where the comic is hosted that took out two walls, several websites, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment did not stop Schlock Mercenary's update schedule; he just set up a temporary site until they got the main host back up. On one occasion, the comic was up several hours late. Howard apologized, and the strip was up by End of Business that day. One occasion in eleven years.

Seemingly any AI should it gain enough processing power. Lunesby, the accidental offspring of a holographic Boy Band and Luna's millennium-old filing system immediately decides to start streamlining the moon's labyrinthine bureaucracy. LOTA (the Longshoreman Of The Apocalypse) does pretty much the same thing on Credomar. OTOH, Petey is suicidally insane when the Toughs pick him up, but eventually becomes the core of the Fleetmind; a gestalt of countless Battleship Class AIs into one, big, (kinda) omniscient Uber-AI... that immediately decides to appoint itself guardian of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Deus Exit Machina: Word of God says it's hard to keep Petey's near omnipotence from slicing through a perfectly tangled Gordian-knot plot. This may explain why Petey was given a reason to avoid contact with the mercenaries at the end of Book 9 (they now remember him having abandoned them), and in Book 11 he has to use all his god-like power to fight the Pa'anuri of Andromeda and cannot spare any to act as Deus Ex Machina for the protagonists.

One of the most common plot complications. For example, the gang didn't see a rogue Ob'enn hijacking the PDCL coming. Petey didn't see the UNS making the mercs think he'd abandoned them coming. You get the idea.

The narrator goes so far as to say, at one point, that good intel for any non-AI-directed military mission usually amounts to, "Crap, I think they heard us coming."

Double Standard: The standard outcome of an accidental insult or reflexive lechery from a male mercenary to a female mercenary is for her to break several of his bones. There's never any repercussions, and none of the men have ever assaulted any of the women.

Also note that 1) there are only six females in the company (two of them not human, and thus of no interest to the guys), and 2) most of the men are a bit chauvinistic (which is one of the reasons they get hit).

Though usually the women are given far more leeway to hit men[2] this is interestingly subverted here when Breya learns that flying into a rage and attacking a mercenary is not a good idea.

An annotation notes that of the classic jury-rigging Holy Trinity of baling wire, Bondo, and Duct Tape, "Duct Tape has actually seen the most change during the intervening centuries. For instance, it can now safely be used to fasten and seal duct-work. Just be sure to lose the handy-dandy spool with the built-in tape cutter before it trims the tape just above your first knuckle."

Exploding Bling Of War: Kevyn and Tagon's epaulets. Tagon just has a grenade while Kevyn has an antimatter anti-tank grenade in one and a 14-kiloton antimatter bomb in the other. After expending both, [1] he had to "decide on new loads".

Tagon alone has lost at least two over the course of the strip, the same one in the same book (medical cloning).

Others who have lost eyes include (but aren't limited to) Andy, Ch'vorthq, Ebbirnoth, Chisulo, Schlock (a special case - he can always go to his home planet and pick some more), and any number of anonymous enemy grunts. Given the state of medical technology, these are almost always either Amusing Injuries or the least of their worries.

It is also one of the few things the titular character has to worry about. As he notes when being shot by a sniper, only a hit to his eyes would even bother him.

Beyond a variety of "Race X hates Race Y and is trying to subjugate or destroy it," there's also a few cases of an extremely negative view of artificial intelligences, especially from Reverend Theo. Though he eventually came to terms with Petey (mostly) and had nothing against Lota becoming a supposedly benevolent dictator.

Kevyn: During this time you [Pi] are not to discharge anything more energetic than a sneeze.Ennesby: Sneezes move at about forty-two meters per second, sir.Kevyn: ...how fast does a fart move?Ennesby: *shocked* Mother of methane! Farts are flammable!

Faster-Than-Light Travel: The nature and socio-political impact of the Teraport is a major theme of the series. The Wormgates also turn out to have far more plot significance than mere transportation.

Smutto (a mixture of natto and corn smut) would also be a good example.

Subverted with chupaquesos. They are delicious.

Foreshadowing: The fact that Kathryn is an ex-UNS captain was quite heavily foreshadowed several times, starting with her exceptional competence at planning and subterfuge, along with her adeptness at using firearms while rescuing Karl Tagon. Also, as Accidental Truth.

"Sis, that's long enough that the thing could have flown here from Andromeda." Guess where the wormgate being disucssed goes to?

Fourth Wall: Gets progressively thicker as the series progresses. In the first volume, characters actively try to decide who's going to die on the basis of when they were introduced, who gets punchlines, and whether they're named. By later volumes, the wall gets nudged much more rarely, and fleetingly.

There's also an interesting one when Schlock tries to trade memories with a timeclone of himself - the intellectual thought-processes recognize two unique Schlocks, but the biology thinks it's recovered an errant fragment of the same amorph unit. What ensues is described (to give us non-amorphs perspective) as being sort of like trying to resist throwing up, except backwards, and with about the same inevitability of outcome.

Generation Xerox: Played with and ultimately averted in a short storyline. General Tagon looks a lot like his son, which causes the latter to worry at one point that he's going to become his father as he ages, but an AI's projection shows that Kaff will look very different when he reaches his father's current age.

Thurl: I've run a cost-benefit analysis, and it remains profitable even in extreme contingencies.Captain Tagon: Did you just weasel-word your way around saying "What's the worst thing that could happen?"Thurl: Hey, you just now invoked Murphy, not me. Those weasel words are there for our protection.

Good Angel, Bad Angel: As usual for this trope, massively parodied. Tagon shoots his shoulder angel with his sidearm because he thinks it's a mosquito, his shoulder devil tries to dress up as an angel, and his shoulder angel comes back to shoot it in the head for doing so.

Kathryn: (upon viewingcertain spy cams in Dr. Pau's facility) Hmph. Well, the good news is that I can now start killing and not feel in the least bit guilty. The bad news is I'm not going to feel the least bit guilty about the killing I'm about to do.

Ch'Vorthq: Sergeant, you will be drinking a very heavy stimulant cocktail cut with shampoo and inert ultra-tensile carbon.Schlock: I don't drink it. I eat it straight.Ch'Vorthq:(dryly) And I suspect you're addicted to it.Schlock:(drawing his BFG)Step away fromthe tub of happiness.

Hellevator: Both an escalator to hell and a space elevator on Luna, called the "Helevator".

Heroic Sacrifice: A couple, despite all the Comedic Sociopathy. Most notably Brad, who stayed on his crippled shuttle to jury-rig a self-destruct out of ordinance so it wouldn't crash in a city and kill hundreds to thousands of people. In a surprising twist, he actually died. He got a really big statue, though.

His last thoughts also "highlight his noble character." This particular sacrifice got all the hero mileage possible.

Not death, but in a similar vein, Tailor agrees to have his personality rewritten (which he is understandably afraid of) to gain the medical knowledge needed to save Tagon.

Ventura: Do you trust me?Tailor: I'm terrified of you.Ventura: But you want me to do this?Tailor: My Captain needs me to be something I'm not.

Honor Among Thieves: The Toughs may be sociopaths but they steer clear of outright evil beyond what's Necessarily Evil to get the job done, and are very loyal to each other. Schlock in particular: to hurt someone he likes is not a safe place to stand. Nor, for that matter, is anywhere else downrange or in the blast radius. Case in point: here and here (death spoiler warning if you're mid Archive Binge).

Human Outside, Alien Inside: many of the aliens look more-or-less human, but have subtle or bizarre differences, like Lt. Ebbirnoth, whose species has their brain located in their pelvis.

Humans Are Special: "Rescue Party" variant; with less than a thousand years in space - a fraction of many prominent species' lifespans - humans have already spread an English-influenced dialect of "Galstandard" far and wide, ballooned to the fifth-largest sapient species and fourth-strongest military power yet seen, rediscovered an order-disrupting technology purposefully suppressed for six million years, and been indirectly responsible for the creation of a godlike AI hivemind. And now that hivemind has decided to express its gratitude... Though we probably can't be trusted to run a project on longevity.

Humans Are White: Averted, in that dark skinned people show up as often as they would in the modern day. Intra-species ethnicity seems to have become a less significant matter compared to the wide variety of sophonts in the Schlockiverse.

Hyperspeed Ambush: The way wars were fought in the galaxy was completely changed thanks to the invention of the Teraport and related inventions such as the Terapedo. It isn't long before various anti-teraport countermeasures are designed to bring a sense of equilibrium back to transgalactic warfare.

Also, a nightmarish variation on this trope, the Cool Gates used for faster-than-light travel before the invention of the Teraport would make a double of you every time you used it. The double would then be kidnapped, interrogated for any useful information, robbed, and then destroyed.

Major Murtaugh: ...Sanctum Adroit is never violent in anger lest we become the evil we behold.
(report about Maximilian's team being wiped out comes in)Maximilian: (smugly) Well... well... Major Murtaugh, are you ready to become what you behold?Major Murtaugh: (looking at him with disgust) I'm ready to punch what I behold. Does that count?

Information Wants to Be Free: Early on in the series, the mercenaries are attacked repeatedly by the F'sherl Ganni Gatekeepers, due to experimenting with (and holding the patent for) the Teraport, a method of Faster-Than-Light Travel that far outstrips the unwieldy stargates that got the F'sherl Ganni their name. Finally, Admiral Breya Andreyasn figures out that there's a way to stop the attacks: Release the Teraport into Open Source, essentially spreading the technology freely across the galaxy, and removing the Gatekeepers' reason to specifically target Tagon's Toughs.

Ingesting Knowledge: Carbosilicate amorphs evolved from data storage systems. They can exchange memories directly, by copying whatever information one wants to share in a single lump and giving another amorph this piece to absorb.

Thurl: Okay, perfect. That should do it.Narrator: Rewind: seven hundred hours earlier, berthed at the High Olympus shipyards.Kevyn: Okay, perfect. That should do it.

Again, during "Force Multiplication." A spy steals a villain's visor computer, which doesn't log itself out. She gloats about how he must be stupid, or it must be defective, right before it blows up in her face. Cut to the one who blew it up complaining about how he always suspected it was defective when she lives. Followed immediately by someone pointing out to the villain how stupid he was to have been walking around with a defective bomb strapped to his face.

Ennesby: The Tausennigan Ob'enn warlords look like cuddly teddy-bears?Petey: Yes, they do. And they'd cheerfully exterminate your entire race for making that observation!Ennesby: I guess that explains their rich military history, then.

And inverted by the Kssthrata, the velociraptor-like species which evolved in the same system as the Ob'enn. Instead of continuing their counter-genocidal war with the Ob'enn, they just moved.

Let's Get Dangerous: Theo (he tend to whip out that rapier), Murtaugh made such a speech that even Haban II and Breya gave her concerned looks. Later, the delegate from flechette bugs Hive Mind decides to flex the wings and scout ahead... immediately followed by Scream Discretion Shot from an enemy patrol.

Little Hero, Big War: Ostensibly the Toughs' position, being a small mercenary company in a big, big galaxy with lots of conflict. However, they do play a role in many important events and are responsible for some major shifts in the galactic balance of power, including the introduction of the teraport, the formation of the Fleetmind, and the creation of LOTA.

Living Doorstop: Kevyn strapping misbehaving Buranabots to the hull as "ablative armor".

Living Memory: Ennesby due to his origin as a boy band was capable of running five parallel personalities plus "director" sentience, and had support for doing this, but lost the data as such by the time he ended up as a flying maraca. Later this capability was used to have a copy of another AI's gestalt "living in his head" for a while as a mostly independent entity, without irreparably breaking both more than they already were.

Loophole Abuse: Presumably, after this strip there's now a company policy regarding air vents, where there wasn't one previously.

Loads and Loads of Characters: Understandable, since it focuses on an entire company of mercenaries, but there's still a lot to keep track of. And the Big Guys tend to all look fairly similar. Not to mention 950 million Gavclones and assorted Gate Clones. Unless a character is confirmed dead there is a very good chance they'll show up again. This applies to everyone.

The mobsters that kidnapped timeclone-Kevyn and general Tagon actually force Kevyn to build a machine that they don't understand.

The original Kevyn turned a mini-wormgate into a gravy gun that splattered the UNS marines about to kill him, though it was fortunate he used it to clone himself first.

Also happens to Lt. Ventura. Her captor tries to be Genre Savvy by not having the innoncent-with-the-big-eyes looking girl guarded by an easily swayed human guard. Instead they locked her in with the robots...

Long Runners: The comic has run continuously since 12 June 2000. Do the math.

Several of the names in the series have gags attached to them (e.g., 'Corporal Oleo' getting sliced in two at the end of an Overly Long Gag based on the saying 'like a hot knife through butter'; the planet Qlaviql, which appeared shortly after Tayler injured his clavicle in Real Life; the Tohdfraugs; Dr Todd, which stood for 'The Old Dead Doctor', who wasn't given a name until long after he was killed). Finally, Fanon holds that Kevyn and Breya's last name is meant to imply that they are descendants of a certain 21st century computer industry figure - who must have done very well, given that they are nobility back on Earth.

Chelle: Why do you think the Barsoom Circus recruits new performers from all over the galaxy each month? People come to see the aliens do weird, alien stuff.Schlock: Are we joining a circus or a freak show?Chelle:[Deadpan]Yes.

Mind Rape: The "Mind-Rip," an invariably fatal method of extracting a being's memories. Funnily enough, it's been used by the "heroes" at least as often as the villains.

Misapplied Phlebotinum: Avertedhard. It took all of a few hours after open-sourcing the Teraport for pan-galactic war to break out. A short while later, teraporting missiles were put into service by most warships. On top of this, the bigger and meaner warships can use their staggeringly powerful annie plants to simply rip other ships apart with Artificial Gravity.

Myth Arc: It's subtle, but the state of the galaxy is influenced a great deal by the Toughs, whether they know it or not. It begins with Kevyn's invention of the teraport, then the gatekeepers siccing the partnership collective on them to supress the technology. Which leads to The teraport wars, and then the war with the dark matter entities.

There's a second arc at play as well. Project Lazarus started as an even more subtle myth arc, but starting about here a lot of Chekovs Guns were fired in quick succession, bringing the arc to the fore. The Lazarus arc may not be as vast as the Teraport Wars or the Andromeda War, but it's a lot more personal - and what with Petey having taken in General Xinchub and possibly allied with him, the two arcs are likely to fuse into one.

No Fourth Wall: More frequently and noticeably in early strips. Nevertheless, recently Kevyn literally "met his maker" during a near-death experience, and instantly recognized him as the cartoonist, which led to this exchange:

Odd Couple: Bunnigus and the Reverend (sounds like a sitcom title), now Happily Married. Except that they've realized their marriage was really just a fake memory implanted in them. And arranged official ceremony. In fact, they were legally married at this time, but don't remember it, because Admiral Emm married them shortly before the mindwipe and they didn't get their old memories back.

Tailor's expression here is notable, just having realized that a gunship is about to shoot his restraints off.

The Reverend has a few of these moments, both giving and receiving.

Ebby: What are the chances Credomar's king can be hacked? ...okay, I'm full. Time to go to sleep.Theo: Sleep? Who can sleep?

Para finds out that Ennesby sent a copy of crazy Tagii to infiltrate an absurdly powerful system. Then , of course, Tagon when the happy news reached him.

In the Pluto Plaza fight:

Sorlie: We haven't seen any [enemy] air support. I'd like to exploit our good fortune while it lasts.Murtaugh: It's not "good fortune" when you don't know where the enemy put their air support.Sorlie: <silently freaks out>

And there is the occasion when a sniper has Schlock in his sights, while Schlock had just fired some grenades at the target. While the sniper tries to get an eye shot, Schlock holds up his fingers to count down from three to zero ("...ground zero") since his targetting computer told him how long it'll take the grenades to reach their target.

Orwellian Retcon: "The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries" used to be "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates," and the "maxims" referred to as "rules" (with the explanation that each "habit" comprised several "rules"). Eventually, the publishers of the real "Seven Habits..." caught wind and made him change it. ("Eventually" here defined as "after over eight years, when the joke had already long since undergone Memetic Mutation...") To soften the blow however, Howard Tayler admitted he was glad for the excuse to make the change, not least because the new title could be used for The Merch.

Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Averted; religion is alive and well among many different cultures, and the Tagon's Toughs have their own chaplain (Reverend Theo). In his first appearance, Howard Tayler included an editor's note stating that this trope is what's "foolishly optimistic," not religion.

Overused Running Gag: In-Universe, this is what Tagon considers Shodan's continuing to bring up the accident during the Mall Cop Command arc where Tagon got a fork stuck in his eye.

Tagon: Clever, but I bet a professional comedian would have moved on to new material by now.

Ennesby: Everyone stand by to pour some Serial Peacemaker into a big bowl of "no-problem."Tagon: How long have you been waiting to use that stupid "Cereal" pun?Ennesby: Ever since you let me name the ship, sir.

People Jars: At one point, the author gets away with a full-frontal nude shot of a woman in a regeneration tank by making her too nude to have skin. "I'm as naked as the day I was born. And then some."

Powered Armor: And how. Besides the standard stuff, the Toughs are equipped with low-profile (to the point of invisibility) armor built into their uniforms that helps diffuse energy weapons and lets them fly.

The Power of Friendship: A twisted sort of application of the trope. The Toughs can't count on their allies, because they're mercenaries and your allies might be the guys you're hired to kill tomorrow; they can't count on any of their respective home governments, for pretty much the same reason; they certainly can't count on their employers, who are frequently known to try to backstab the Toughs since, well, they hired a band of mercenaries to begin with, so why not add "screwing over those who make a living with violence"? But they know they can count on their friends (which, admittedly, is usually limited to "each other", but the sentiment is there).

Projected Man: most of the shipboard AIs; also, Ennesby before he joined the crew and got a body of sorts.

Psychic Powers: It is stated early on by the narrator that someone with "psychic sight" can see the bullet destined to kill someone. This is dropped in favor of harder sci-fi, but psychic powers such as (radio) telepathy get referenced every once in a while.

Psychotic Man Child: Probably the best description of Schlock's attitude. He does show care and loyalty to his friends despite his status as a sociopath, but enjoys fighting too much to care about the blazing hot maimery he spews from his plasma cannon on anyone but his friends.

Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The misfits and more exotic alien members of the team are all assembled in a squad led by Schlock himself. Tagon and his command staff treat them as an elite force they don't so much deploy as unleash.

However, the Kssthrata, neighbours of the cute and furry but genocidal Ob'enn, are much nicer.

Retcon: Due to trademark issues, the Big Book of War of the series needed to be retitled. Formerly "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates", it is now "The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries".

The most enduring example is that Schlock looks like, well, a giant pile of crap. Nearly everyone who sees him for the first time mistakes him for a moving pile of poop.

Der Trihs ending up as a head in a jar; Kevyn surviving repeated deaths; Schlock crawling, or squeezing, through air vents and pipes; the names of the ships in Petey's fleet; the Toughs killing lawyer drones on sight; the Gavs. In Book 11, the recurring question What Would Schlock Do?

And then Schlock shows up to deliver a superb "Show Not Tell" answer. "This."

Every time Kathryn gets her bus repaired, the Toughs hijack it. Three times.

It's almost impossible to keep track of the amount of times when kitties are involved and Schlock tries to eat them. Fortunately for the kitties, he never does.

Schlock being faster than he looks, much to the surprise of those facing him.

The in-universe Schlock Mercenary TV show, it comes around every now and then to overshadow the protagonists and causes them inconveniences.

Sapient Ship: it's a rare exception when a capital ship is flown by a human pilot or even a mobile robot. Almost every armed starship we see is inhabited by its own AI, who "is" the ship and considers the whole structure its body.

Science Marches On: The Milky Way is consistently depicted as a regular spiral; fortunate, since a barred spiral would have made this strip a bit more blatant.

Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Cheerfully Lampshaded: The narrator will go into great effort to describe exactly how big the universe/galaxy/star system is, and how abysmally low the chances of some event happening are, and then the event will happen. A lot of these are Justified much, much later.

Space Elevator: Using gravitics. And since they extend to planet-stationary orbit and "a little" beyond, it takes more gravitics still for elevators to have acceleration allowing reasonable travel time.

Space People: The F'sherl-ganni/Gatekeepers, to the point of being able to survive vacuum.

Spy Speak: In this strip,Maximillian Haluska's use of field operative terminology gave away he was more than just a well-equipped thug. The "Aunt Amy" and "Uncle Bob" thing comes up again here, in conversation with Para Ventura. When the latter is revealed to be

Starfish Aliens: Schlock is really, really weird. Most of the others we meet at least breathe oxygen, and a lot of them are something vaguely resembling humanoid. But the Pa'anuri are the weirdest of all.

Story-Breaker Power: Petey could deal with most of the issues the heroes face on a whim. He has purposely done things in a less efficient way just to give them something to do in a few storylines since his ascension to Fleetmind.

Talking Your Way Out: Most characters employ this (even the supposedly dumb ones) to some degree, but Kathryn in particular is an artist. No small wonder, considering her background. Case in point here, talking her way out of being held at gunpoint.

The X of Y: All the Ob'enn ship names follow a strict pattern: The [Object] of [Pretentious Adjective] [Pretentious Principle]. If it is a defensive ship, the object will be a piece of armor or article of clothing; if offensive, a pointy handweapon of some sort. Lampshaded when Tagon discovers his recently-acquired fabber is of Ob'enn manufacture:

Tagon: Let's slap a drive and crew quarters on it and christen it the Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance.Kevyn: Making fun of Ob'enn ship names is like shooting fish in the barrel of circular swimming.

Time Abyss: The Really Old Dude and Very Old Guy, members of the species that originally created the amorphs.

Fobottr Tenant: Are you claiming that your people have been on the surface for over ten million years?Rod: Oh, my people have been down there for much longer than that. No, I was just talking about me, personally.

Unit Confusion: Being reasonably hard SF, it's usually pretty good, but with the occasional slipup.

Especially early on, "watt" would occasionally be used as a unit of energy instead of power.

Kerchak made this mistake as late as 2010, but that time the author claims it was intentional.

Upon getting his head around that one, Tayler made the different error of using "terawatt-nanoseconds" to mean "an incomprehensibly huge unit of energy".[3]"

Gav once refers to the "radius" of a Negative Space Wedgie where the author probably meant "diameter" (a slip-up from him being a bit less plausible than one from Kerchak), since a later strip has it swallowing a ship at a bit over half the "radius" given.

Kevyn: When you've already been flipped out of the frying pan and into the fire, what do you call it when you get flipped again into something even worse?Ennesby: I don't know. I'm reindexing "frying pan" for a higher baseline, though.

Uplifted Animal: Humans have uplifted elephants (several versions), gorillas, chimpanzees, polar bears, some reptile or equine (has elongated snout, sort of crest over the neck and olive to brown skin, but details were not clearly visible) and possibly others.

Pi:Hyperspace Death-Ray. That's what Credomar is.Lota: Correction: "Credomar" is a city-state full of coddled humans who currently reside on a habitable moon of their very own. The remains of their station...THAT is a hyperspace death-ray.

↑with reasons ranging from being in danger to the men making chauvinistic remarks to Tagon simply not realizing that Elf is coming on to him

↑Power is energy divided by time, so "terawatt-nanoseconds" would have been simply "kilojoules," or about a hundredth of the energy the human body gets from a carrot. He was most likely trapped in the more common mold of "x per second," where, for instance, terajoules per nanosecond would be the extremely large "zettawatts."